The U.S. is making common cause with Iran against Sunni extremists in Iraq. Not so Stephen Harper. He remains pure.

Iraqi men who volunteered to join the battle against jihadist-led Sunni militants take part in training organized by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, an Iraqi Shiite political party, on Wednesday in Basra.

Even before the Iraq crisis, Canada had been taking a harder line against Iran than either the British or Americans.

That hasn’t changed.

Indeed, on Saturday Baird posted on Canada’s official government website an article that he’d written accusing Iran of “terrorizing its people at home and sponsoring terrorism abroad.”

But then nuance has never been a strong point for the Harper Conservatives.

“The emerging debates on foreign affairs should be fought on moral grounds,” Harper wrote back in 2003. “The great geopolitical battles against modern tyrants and threats are battles over values.”

At an abstract level, this was a commendable statement. Morality is sorely lacking in the relations among states.

But at another it was singularly impractical.

In the real world of geopolitics, very few issues are clear cut.

Occasionally, a Hitler emerges who must be stopped at all costs. Usually, however, reality is more complex.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, for instance, may be a nasty bit of work. His annexation of Ukrainian Crimea is almost certainly contrary to international law.

But, as the American, French and German governments understand, Putin must be party to any negotiations if the crisis in Ukraine is to be solved.

It’s not enough to compare his actions to those of Hitler’s Germany, as Baird did.

It’s not enough to snub him, as Harper did during this month’s D-Day ceremonies in France. Nor is it wise, as Canada’s Conservatives are doing, to try and re-fight the Cold War.

In Eastern Europe, Russia is too important to be ignored. The West need not appease Putin. But it must deal with him.

There are some instances where Harper has curbed his moralizing zeal. Early on, the prime minister did vow that he would not let his relations with China be held hostage to “the almighty dollar.” That was soon reversed under pressure from Canadian oil and business interests.

And in spite of its steadfast support for Israel, Ottawa has not yet cut off relations with the Palestinian Authority in order to punish it for co-operating with the militant group Hamas.

Here Harper has taken the unusual step of following Obama’s lead rather than that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But on Iran, the Harper government remains obdurate.

Even conservative U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham understands that it makes sense to mend fences with the Iranians in order to forestall something worse happening in Iraq.

Zealots can rest assured that there no such dilly-dallying in Ottawa. Canada’s government remains pure. It has divided the world into good guys and bad guys. The Iranians remain irrevocably black-hatted.

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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